A new art exhibit, Memory Vessels: Porcelain Paintings and Other Anthologies, opens July 6 on the 8th floor of Harold Washington Library Center. Memory Vessels, featuring the sculptural works of artist Jayne King, is the second exhibit in the 2025-2026 Eighth Floor Call for Artists cycle.
Jayne King is a Chicago-born artist and graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work in ceramics, object collection and book-making explores the malleable nature of memory, haunted and holy spaces, and the chain of living connection. Her “memory vessels,” a series of large hand-painted porcelain pots inspired by functional historical forms such as amphorae and canopic jars, consider the relationships between social invisibility, utilitarian craft history and the geological mechanisms that both govern and record activity on earth.
King is a 2022 ArtAxis+Haystack Fellowship recipient, a 2022 Chicago Artist Coalition SPARK Grant recipient, a 2023 Luminarts finalist, and a 2023-2024 CPS Lives Resident Artist. She is currently a long-term artist in residence at The Digs Chicago and an alum of the Hyde Park Art Center's Bridge Program. She teaches ceramics classes at The Digs Chicago and Made Chicago. Her work has been exhibited nationally, including at James Watrous Gallery, Povos Gallery, the Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection, the Chicago Fine Art Salon, Union Street Gallery, the Bridgeport Art Center and Woman Made Gallery.
Memory Vessels: Porcelain Paintings and Other Anthologies will be on display on the 8th floor of Harold Washington Library Center from July 6 to September 20, 2025.